The Reserve Bank of India has reduced the cash reserve ratio (CRR) by 100 bps. CRR is the proportion of total sum , a bank reserves with the apex bank. The current move of the reserve bank would provide Rs 40,000 crore in the Indian monetary system. The move of the apex bank would help the cash-starved financial system of the country. The bank has cut the CRR by 2.5 percent so far.

Berlin - Germany is to create a special agency for its bank rescue after the country's central bank said its independence would be compromised if it became an arm of government policy, sources said in Berlin Thursday.

The move came as Chancellor Angela Merkel met with leaders of the 16 states to negotiate on the package, announced three days earlier. She aims to have the legislation in place by late Friday.

Reykjavik  - The central bank of Iceland on Thursday said it would guarantee payments in an effort to restore confidence in the Icelandic banking system amid a global credit squeeze that has disrupted payments to and from the North Atlantic nation.

The central bank, Sedlabanki, said it "guarantees" that the funds "will reach the ultimate beneficiaries' accounts."

Last week, the government in Reykjavik nationalized the country's three largest banks, which have run up liabilities at least five times that of Iceland's gross national product in recent years.

Frankfurt - German banks across the board have been steadily winning new customers as the financial crisis mounts, statistics released Thursday show.

Rather than withdrawing money from banks to hide under the mattress, Germans appear to regard banks as the safest place, especially after a promise last month by Chancellor Angela Merkel that not one euro in banks will be lost.

The country's top commercial bank, Deutsche Bank, said Thursday on its website its customer base had grown net by 200,000 since the start of the year to nearly 10 million.

New York - Citigroup extended its financial losses for a fourth quarter, registering a loss of 2.8 billion dollars for the period between July and September.

The bank attributed part of its loss to nearly 10 billion dollars in writedowns from loans gone bad and securities that have lost value.

Zurich - Switzerland's two leading banks were forced Thursday to seek out new capital injections as the nation became the latest country forced to unveil a bail-out plan in the wake of the global financial crisis.

While UBS AG, the nation's biggest bank, turned to the government for 6 billion Swiss francs (5.2 billion dollars) in additional capital, Credit Suisse Group AG said it was raising 10 billion Swiss francs from private investors and the Qatar Investment Authority.

Credit Suisse's announcement came as Switzerland's second biggest bank posted a 1.3-billion-franc third-quarter loss following further writedowns resulting from the world financial crisis.